Joe De Sena's Six Rules for Competition

Consult Your Elders

1 of 6

Credit: Photograph by Peter Yang

I was lucky: From a very young age, I knew to ask somebody older, somebody who'd done things before. I must have been 8 or 10, and I'm hanging out with 15-year-olds because it was just easier for me to bypass the mistakes. How do you sell fireworks? I just wanted to get right to, "How do you do this?" I always wanted to be around successful people. And a lot of people don't do that.